Abilities and Mechanics I can't make to work

[thelee]

16 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

The recovery times for consumables are generally too long. Sometimes they are useful early game when your casters run out of spells, but otherwise it is often not worth spending 4 seconds applying a poison or drinking a potion in combat.

yeah exactly my thinking. the opportunity cost to drink a +2 to stat potion or one of the other weaker potions in combat just feels reeeeeally high. at least with drugs (and also poisons!) is that you can use them out of combat. plus, there's probably a handful of potions that i will actually willingly drink in combat, and i'd rather reserve my quick item slots for them (examples: healing potions, potion of impediment, the +action speed potion, antidote depending on the area)

Edited November 5, 2022 by thelee

[Majorman]

OK, another one: the Ring of Mule's Wit. The immunities to mind afflictions are great. But the -8 Int is brutal. It means -16 Will (brutal) and severe penalties to spell range and duration. Then again, abilities that cause mind afflictions are usually the ones that target Will at the first place, so the Will penalty might not be as severe, I guess? Anytime I think I can find a use for this ring, it turns out I cannot. So, has someone found a use for this item?

[Boeroer]

The Ring of Mule's Wit only gives resistances, not immunities - but getting three resistances is still pretty good. An attribute cannot drop below 1, so my approach for this ring is to make a char with 3 INT who doesn't rely on it. Then the Ring only takes away 2 attribute points from your character instead of 8 and you get 3 resistances for 2 points of INT. Cool imo.
Some abilities don't care about INT much: Gouging Strike lasts for the whole fight, so does Brand Enemy, all the ray spells have fixed duration, some DoTs have better dps with low INT, abilities that have a linear AoE such as Iconic Projection or Mind Lance are not affected, all direct singular target dmg spells such as Mind Blades, Sunlance don't care and so on.

I found that Ciphers work well (esp. Soulblade and Psion), Rangers (not Arcane Archer), Rogues (not Trickster) and also Wizards. I think you can make every class work somewhow, although Priests would suffer most I guess.   

 

[NotDumbEnough]

Linear AoE's are affected though to a lesser extent. Intellect governs the range of these abilities. A 3 int barbarian will have to stand much closer for Driving Roar than a 23 int barbarian.

[Constentin Lévine]

And for some builds this ring is very efficient : Int seems good for every characters but that can be interesting to minimize this stat. 

For exemple, I have a cipher- ff monk with this ring and 10 int. In function of the incomming fight, I can wear this ring, to have 1 Int /10 int (duality), and then use FF for a very short enfeebling duration (1int for a 3s duration, if I remember correctely), or not wear the ring and then have 10/20int (duality), for fight I dont want to micro.

[Boeroer]

14 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

Linear AoE's are affected though to a lesser extent. Intellect governs the range of these abilities. A 3 int barbarian will have to stand much closer for Driving Roar than a 23 int barbarian.

Yeah, right. Compared to normal INT the "line" becomes pretty short - but it still remains a functional AoE imo in most cases. Not if you are playing a mostly ranged char maybe, but for melee characters this shouldn't matter a lot compared to the devastating effect 1 INT has to the usual circular or cone-shaped AoEs.


 

[thelee]

the main problem i have with ring of mule's wit is that you don't need the effect in every fight, but that -8 intellect always hurts. if you really need the mind resistance, you can chow on some svef, which even a 0 alchemy user will probably be able to have last for at least one fight where you need it. (incidentally: svef is great)

[NotDumbEnough]

Yes, you often get hit by the afflictions you were trying to avoid in the first place due to having -16 will, unless you already dumped intellect on character creation.

[Boeroer]

Yes, I would not wear the Ring unless I was rolling a 3 INT character anyway.